Three Years Ago...

Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby boasted of "Heady days for those of us in the war party".
Yesterday's column tempered as it is by a thousand bloody ambushes, does naught but screech "traitor and sellout" at congressional democrats who arethemselves bound and determined to wrap up our misadventure in Iraq with dignity intact.
Jeff is of course, a hopeless debate opponent as he either wants to set impossible terms or he indulges pre-discussion name calling of a low and odious order. In both cases a rational exchange of view is nicely ruled out.
Let Humble Elias be blunt:
Harry Reid didn't lose this war.
The liberal bloggers didn't lose this war.
The New York Times didn't lose this war.
Teddy Kennedy didn't lose this war.
Until fairly recently, they have all been bystanders in the great war to liberate Iraq.
No George Bush lost this war.
Bad faith on his part started the war, it was prosecuted by giddy amateurs and the peace handed over to a bunch of interns from the Cato Institute.
Honestly what the hell did anyone really expect given the record of this vile rabble of hacks?
Bush lost this war, period end of story.
I see no reason to pretty this up, Bush wanted this war, he got this war and then he lost this war...now he wants to blame his own bungling on his liberal opponents here at home.
Shameless cowardice if you asked me.
LBJ was man enough to admit when he was licked and make appropriate policy changes vis a vis Viet Nam. Bush however is a craven specimen kept aloft by gaseous lackeys like Jeff Jacoby.
If it wasn't costing us all blood and treasure I'd laugh.

Wistful Joanie...

Columnists all eventually run out of ideas and start recycling old themes at some point, unless of course they are fantasists a'la Mike Barnicle. Such is the case with Joan Vennochi's column today in which she clearly looks back in sentimental glee on the royal snarking she gave John Kerry back in campaign '04. Oh those were heady heady days for Ms. Vennochi, hardly a week went past when she didn't challenge our Junior Senator's manhood in some unsubtle fashion.
Clearly Joanie has an unhealthy thing about John Kerry. It is not hard to see why, he brings out the Junior High School Queen Bee in Columnist Vennochi, By Ghod I think he makes her feel young again!
Ah but you can't go back to simpler times now can you?
Joanie thinks she can though, which is why she is half-heartedly trying to gin up a primary challenger to John Kerry's re-election to the US Senate, she even has the effrontery to suggest Deval Patrick as a campaign model for anyone so disposed.
This would be the same Deval Patrick whom Joanie Vennochi wrote off as a loony-leftie loser the day after the democratic primary last September.
Nostalgia is sometimes a dangerous emotion, but honestly what else does Joan Vennochi give us? Other than her ongoing jihad against John Kerry just what does she really believe in? And WHO does she depend on to get it all tranposed in policy?
You got me on that one, she hates Kerry thats all I can figure out.

Rudy Giuliani starts turning ideological cartwheels...

Apparently he was once a firm supporter of civil unions for homosexuals, as of yesterday, though he is agin em'.
My God but Mitt Romney is really having a big impact on the the GOP field all out of proportion to his lagging numbers! It seems like everyone on that card either wants to be a groveling toady or make a spectacle of their craven flip-flippery.
Mitt must be proud...soon his lack of pride will simply be one case among many.

That pic though, in the above link to Americablog, is just the crowning touch in my humble opinion.

As Predictable as mud in March...

John McCain piles into the race for President.
The above article contains the above suggestive quote:
"I think he's a man that offers stability and a man that's been tested," said the Rev. John Ross, 50, of Kittery, Maine. "And we need that in America today."
Stability?
Yeah Right...he is plenty stable til the waiter screws up the order and then it's Katey-bar-the-door!
It is ironic that McCain is running on his good judgement because it's clear he hasn't declined many bad ideas these past six years and certainly he can't see anything wrong with our current misadventure in Iraq.
The best Old John can offer us is a promise to do everything Bush has done but somehow do it all right. If you liked George, then you will love John.
Can't say as that formulation necessarily bespeaks any kind of good judgement.

Talk of a vote of no confidence

in the US Senate in respect of Attorney General Gonzalez' leadership at the DoJ.
So if the Senate Democrats are talking about this, with their famous razor thing margin, you can imagine how abysmally the AG must be polling right now.
Of course, technically, the congress could impeach Gonzalez, but the bill would have to come out of the House first (easy enough) and then the Senate shuts down to form a court, so the gummint's bidness then comes to a splendid standstill.
Given the paucity of the options, I think everyone is hoping the AG resigns sooner rather than later.
On the other hand if he stays, he becomes automatically campaign '08's designated praetorian whipping boy....so one way or another it is a win win situation.

Governor Patrick sez no

to $700K in Federal "Abstinence Education" payola.
I am heartily in accord with his excellency with respect to this matter, the money could be better spent on flood control, metal detectors or any number of practical things....abstinence education itself being on a par with astrology or divination by way of dove entrails in Humble Elias' opinion.
Moreover it is yet another form of "wowser welfare", and is therefore less focused on results and more on spreading lucre among the President's roilsome base of book worshippers and professional virtue-pimps.
Don't get me wrong, abstinence works great, if you run a containment wall between the boys and girls. However when it fails (and it does pretty often) you have nothing to fall back on since you bet the farm on an artificial, exclusionary and a theological type of birth control.
Anyway we can't spend the money on anything else, so I say the hell with it.

"Fenway Samurai"

A non-fan looks at the Red Sox sweep of the Yankees this weekend.

Tom Friedman was on Wolf Blitzer today...

two insufferable windbags blatting away at one another for fifteen solid minutes I'll never ever get back.
Tom of course, like a host of other weather-vanes in the punditariat, has turned against Bush's war in Iraq. He looked nervous and shifty eyed through out the whole colloquy...like Wolf was gonna spring some embarrassing video footage on Friedman at any moment. Tom for his part, really really really like us all to forget his servile cheerleading for the war back in 2003.
Fortunately, Blitzer brought out the kid gloves for a fellow opinion industry stalwart and all was well.
Meanwhile, Friedman tried to repair his tattered reputation as a Sage by pushing for better renewable energy policies down in Washington.
It is Friedman's thesis that properly presented and framed, such policies can be a new "bridging ideology" that'll bring back a grand spirit of Bipartisanship to Washington DC.
Tom wants to make renewable energy all patriotic and capitalistic in order to entice mainstream conservatives to the green banner.
God Save Us All from such a fate say I!!!
My ghod these columist yaps do love that whole utopian fantasy of the democrats and republicans just gettin' together and lovin' one another don't they?
Tom doesn't realize that thanks to Lee Atwater and Karl Rove and Grover Norquist and Katherine Harris et al, that the entirely fraudulent notion of bipartisanship has vanished from American politics for at least a generation or more.
Who are we to negotiation with for all these nicey-nice green energy policies anyway? Dick Cheney? The Vice President is a thoroughly untrustworthy man in every way, he would only seek to use such discussions as a means to destroy the democrats. The President he serves is even worse, Bush thinks negotiations are an outright confession of unmanly weakness.
The GOP's oncomers for 2008 are the usual collection of slaves, lunatics, book worshippers and craven blowhards none of whom can be counted upon to keep their side of a notional bargain on the enviroment.
What is worse, the only vaguely green-centric republican Friedman can offer up as a spokesman for the policy is the politically emasculated Arnold Schwarzenegger, if that is Tom's idea of a good start for enviro-friendly policies in the GOP then all I can say is Good Luck Tommy.

The Supreme Court

has upheld the 2002 statute passed by congress outlawing so called "partial birth abortions". Poor James Dobson must've had to change his pants when he heard, finally his red headed stepchild in the White House delivered on one of his many many promises to touch off the fabled conservative eschaton. The whole mishaugas has a twilight of the god's feeling to it, after decades of lobbying they've finally gotten a medical procedure outlawed...cue the dancin' in the streets music as mainstream conservatism bids on complete collapse.
If you wanna frame the argument though, one must first ask just which of our constitutional rights will the GOP leave alone in the weary wicked end? It is a short list because they seem to disapprove of so many of our hallowed freedoms.
All this to gin up some crazy version of christian politics animated by an unbelievably narrow minded interpretation of a badly edited holy book.

Amidst the all the woe and turmoil,

the National Urban League has issued it's annual State of Black America report.
We ought to take a moment to meditate on the ongoing income disparities here in America and such policy solutions as may be proposed in the pending Presidential campaign. Wages are flat, benefits on the decline, Unionism are a thing of the past... long ago in the Kerner Commission Report made a dire prophecy of two Americas seperate and unequal divided by a the gap of economic opportunity, that prediction has become our reality.
So at least let us start with that notion.
All of this comes down hard on Black America (hell what doesn't?)but it's a problem that resonates all over the polity.

Revealed Religion is under attack

sayeth Jeff Jacoby, from no less a titan than Elton John.
This is one of Jeff's fabled howlers, a column thick with unintentional hilarity. For out of such measly stuff as one atheist California Congressman, Chris "the snitch" Hitchens and a vapid Time cover article he contructs a big scary secular humanist bloc that is gunning for revealed religion and book worshippers everywhere.
Jeff quotes Elton John as musing about "banning religion", this is a nazi-soviet type thought so bleats our Laughing Young Senescence. To me, there seems to be a big laughable gap between a paunchy old British Glam Rocker and Der Fuhrer.
Of course, stop and think, so many religions out there, wanna "ban" Sir Elton and his homosexuality, is it any wonder he wants to fire back in the same manner?
It's understandable, even if I don't approve of the notion.
Modern conservatism, even in its degraded current condition, is ever needful of big scary entirely imaginary monsters with which to slay or use in fundraising appeals. Today's column is entirely in that vein full of undeserved self pity and inexplicable persecution mania.

On the day after the massacre

It is important to remind ourselves of two mutually depressing notions:
One:
That a lunatic with homicide on the mind always has the advantages of stealth and surprise on their side. They can pick the time of their mayhem and act with celerity. Law enforcement on the other hand, at the moment of truth always lags behind the determined mass murderer.
What I am saying here is, we can never be safe from these people.

Two: Given the fact that the "gun population" of the Republic, outnumbers the human population by many millions of firearms and the fact that gun owners outnumber voting liberals by many millions and you get the broad and depressing parameters of our current situation. One guy with two pistols and a thirst for kill on a campus swarming with armed police...everyone was armed and nothing was stopped til the last bullet.

This is our future kids, it is staring right in the face so get used to it.

Der Tag?

Probably not, but I like that fact that JK is stirring the pot up.

Drive Time Barnicle...

96.9 FM Talk has replaced the departed and disgraced Don Imus with his old buddy pal Mike Barnicle in the morning drive time slot. I'm guessing this is a temporary gig and suitably ironic as well since it was Mike's many many appearances "Imus in the Morning" gave the Boston Columnist the idea that he could be a radio personality.
Barnicle claims to be a democrat, but he is habitually too impressed and or chummy with jerks like George Bush Jr. to be an effective partisan voice.
I can recall with the simplest nostalgia Mike bleating into the telephone "I just like the guy" whenever the President's name came up.
Of course that was back when Bush had an eight percent approval rating...t'ings have changed since then.
No doubt Barnicle is one of Lenin's proverbial "useful idiots" soon to be replaced by some liberal-hating Falangist gasbag...Hey if Mike Barnicle can stage a comeback doesn't Michael Savage deserve a second chance?

Oh and...

a mere two months into the President's escalation in Iraq and the fabled "Green Zone" a libertarian paradise within Baghdad for nerdy AEI interns is now no longer safe from suicide bombers.

Hey...

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED MISTER PRESIDENT!

Erratum

The other day I noted that Don Imus is an employee of NBC, in fact MSNBC until yesterday simply simulcast his radio show, in fact as a radio personality he was an employee of CBS til' last night at least.
Anyway, stick a fork in him, Imus is done! Fired, Terminated, Through!
Larry King inexplicably marked the occasion by having on Serena Williams who kept casting her eyes around throughout the entire program as if to look for an exit.
What she or the hilariously incoherent Bo Dietl had to say about the whole controversy hardly worth repeating.

Polka dots on the Red Line

of an alleged vividness not seen since Bozo the Clown's last stand back in the early 1970's.

Leftahead...

is in there pitching, I firmly belief that podcasts are the new frontier for liberal bloggers, too bad Humble Elias has a voice that suggests an undertaker with a bad barbituate habit.
Meanwhile ToughEnough.org soldiers on...

Oh and THIS is your President that uncomplicated genial cowboy who wants to abdicate war policy to some nebulous war-czar. Whoever takes the job should simply fire Bush and Cheney as their first act...that'll do wonders for the war on terror right off the bat.
Sad end for the man who once strutted the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln framed by a "Mission Accomplished" banner while Chris Matthews and Don Imus all but masturbated with sheer joy.

Imus finally get a good punch in the nose

richly deserved IMHO.
Hell Imus and his gruesome on-air lackeys have been saying gawd-awful stuff like this for years, I'm rotten glad someone finally stood up to him.
Of course, under pressure from his owners at NBC Imus as apologised and was today flailing around on air looking for an opportunity to express his regrets to the Rutgers Women's Basketball Team.
Imus, like most chat show tyrants, has a vast capacity for self pity and persecution mania, never more so than when he is blatantly caught out like this.
As of this morning he was flailing around looking for an opportunity to apologise to the Scarlet Knights in person whilst grousing bitterly about his treatment at the hands of his alleged enemies.
In other words, same old same old.
Truth is, Imus has been using racial jokes for years to maintain his he-man from Caucasiastan bona fides even as he sinks into a gruesome impotent dotage. He gets a pass on all this nasty palaver because he is a regular stop for various big time pundits and numerous a-list politicians from both parties. Democrats have put up with his antics because he is one of the few nationally syndicated radio talk show hosts who will given them a semblance of a fair hearing.

The Boston Globe reports

some 61% of respondents in a recent poll back the introduction of casino gambling here in the Commonwealth.
The Chimes at Midnight is in general opposed to such a measure, it represents proxy taxation of the working class as well as the corporatization of an otherwise minor controllable vice. Now there may be a revenue windfall for the Commonwealth but what jobs will be created other than more low wage service sinecures?
No, Humble Elias is agin' it, it's classic "short money" type thinking of a type we can do without.

"Varmints-n-critters-n-rats OH MY!"

The Boston Globe reports that Candidate Romney has revised his lifelong passion for hunting with the following proviso:

"I've always been a rodent and rabbit hunter. Small varmints if you will. I began when I was 15 or so and I have hunted those kinds of varmints since then. More than two times."

If they are "small varmints" Governor Romney, then why spend all that money on a firearm and the requisite paperwork it requires and instead simply set out some traps for the pesky vermin in question?

Cause, the "National Small Varmint Trappers Association" has no bigfoot imprint within the GOP that is why.

Moreover the use of the neologism "varmint" is just plain silly coming from an educated former Governor of Massachusetts and a Bishop in the Church of Latter Day Saints.
Not a week seems to go by that Mitt Romney doesn't indulge some head-scratching craven-ness in his increasingly bizarrre quest for the Presidency.
"Varmints"....yeah yer a real mountain man with that one Mitt.

Saw Mitt Romney's much ballyhooed campaign commercial last night...

bumptious nonsense is what it amounted to.
Much of the advert is given over to a convoluted explanation of his plan to sign a budget that is fixed a 1% below the rate of inflation or some such rubbish, I couldn't figure it out and I have a master's degree, what the ordinary bloke in NH makes of it can be easily imagined.
The rest of the commercial was full of truculent threats to veto bad ideas and bad budgets citing his experience as Governor of Massachusetts where he supposedly eight-sixed all kindsa stuff.
Truth is, the legislature pretty much over-rode Mitt's vetoes at their leisure...they knew he hadn't the votes to sustain his veto and he knew it as well, this where our current health insurance law came from.
As an advertisement, I give it a C-plus, the narration was confusing, the threats laughable however the footage of Romney made him look shiny and pretty enough to get some traction up in NH.
We will see how well he wears over time.

So the Governor wants to build a Boston

to Fall River-New Bedford rail link?
This is a good idea, opening up commuter resources could bring new housing to bear in the Commonwealth...raise incomes...generate new revenue for the state...a host of good things.
Moreover, cheap reliable rail travel is the dream of even the dumbest troglodyte columnist here in the over-compressed north east.
BUT....
This sensible notion is top of the twenty billion vigorish we need for the wear and tear on our current transportation resources over the next two decades, without mentioning the MBTA's current cash strapped condition.
Again I plaintively wail all and sundry are good ideas or even desperate necessities...but where will the money come from?
Where??

The Ongoing Revenge of John Forbes Kerry....

Apparently JK sez, Senator McCain was inquiring after the DEMOCRATIC Vice Presidential nomination back in 2004!

Geez John Kerry seems to be starting on a second career as a champion sh*t-stirrer isn't he?
And supposedly McCain is his friend no less...stories like this do nothing but reinforce conservative unease with the Arizona Senator and keep the GOP primary-cauldron a-bubbling.
Of course, I can recall that for all his manly veteran bona fides, John McCain didn't speak out against the whole "Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth" mishaugas...so turnabout is fairplay.

"300" reviewed

over at Channel Zero of course.

Tommy Thompson piles in...

The GOP Presidential field is rapidly coming down to the afterthoughts and fantasists as Former Wisconsin Governor, Tommy Thompson bad hairpiece and all, jumps into the race as a "reliable conservative".
Well, thanks to George Bush the bar is set mighty low for "reliable conservatives" these days, no doubt the Former Governor will content himself with promising the vast horde of midwestern bankrupts and evictees a nice piddlin' tax cut to assuage the sudden drop in their standard of living.
Otherwise, Thompson is the sort of genial big business governor whose innovative hatred of the poor earns the usual plaudits from the perpetually amazed Time Magazine.
He might make a good VP choice if some yappy chowderhead like Gingrich catches a wave, but other than that, Thompson is a third rater in every way.
Humble Elias doesn't expect Thompson to go anywhere, he is a man of the past even among atavistic ranks of the current GOP field.

If the Iranian seizure of fifteen British Tars

on the high seas can drive the price of gas to $2.65 a gallon plus at the pump here in America, imagine the cost-per-barrel spike when the US Air Force starts dropping daisy-cutters in and around Tehran.
And what...has Jeff Jacoby, Dick Cheney, their so called President and the rest of the war party's giddiest done to prepare the American people for the possibility of an oil-drive recession here at home?
Patently nothing.
The can't do anything like that because it would tip their hand since their policy to sneak this new war up on the citizenry.
I'm sure the stealth and guile of their scheme seems very impressive to the casual observer, but it is built on the fatally naive' premise that victory is mere matter of willpower (in the crudest Allen Druryean sense) and careful press management.
The reality is, no such policy can long be sustained if it results in economic paralysis at home and a concurrent drop in the standard of living.
As a matter of fact, if the price goes up far enough and fast enough, I wouldn't give two plugged nickles for any of the President's celebrated truculence and clarity of vision.